Alexanders in the Mediterranean: Rondinara to Porto Brandinghi

With a tear in our eye we decided that it was time to leave Corsica and Rondinara for points south. Two of our crew are approaching the end of their time with us and we need to get to Sicily. We briefly toyed with the idea of going to Roma, skipping Sicily but decided that it would be too difficult a logistics problem, plus Hayden's flight to Munich from Rome would be seven hundred Euros. So much for instant planning.

Fun along the way...

More fun along the way!

Anyway, that means that we are going to head further south before we go. I had tried to convince Marina that the route from the top of Sardinia was only 45 miles longer to Sicily than from the south end -- 120 miles away. While I was unable to convince her that a 220 miler was not much different than a 165 miler, I was able to convince her that 180 vs. 165 was not much different and it saved us going another 60 miles down the coast of Sardinia, So south back to Sardinia we go.

Matt at work...tough life.

The day started like many others, me getting up at 7 and calling my buddy Trevor to talk about work for an hour or so. Marina usually gets up around 8, starts the kettle boiling, makes me a coffee and tea for herself -- then we sit on deck for a bit to enjoy the sun and quiet timw while everyone else is still asleep. We decided to get going at around 8:30 so we woke of Ross to help us get the dinghy engine on deck and lift the anchor to get going.

Ross and Chelsea bringing in the jib...not enough wind.

There wasn't really much wind so we powered out of the bay, dodging the dozens of other boats that were anchored there. We definitely needed to get going because we had filled up both holding tanks and definitely needed to lighten the load.

It was a pretty uneventful day powering and trying to sail as much as possible (but keeping the speed up) for about 8 hours. We dropped a hook in a place called Isola Tavolara where we definitely saw the pecking order of wealth -- you had the millionaires in the 40-50 foot boats, the 10-millionaires in the 70-80 footers, the 100-millionaires in the 150 foot boats, the Billionaire in the 250 foot boat and the multi-billionaire in the 500 footer called Rising Sun -- might be the biggest yacht I have ever seen.

The bay at Tavarola

Tavolara was a nice anchorage and Marina, Ross and Hayden swam to shore to check out what was there...which wasn't much more than two restaurants, a bar and an outdoor movie theatre.

Our "neighbours" at Tavolara

We decided we needed some food so we went around the corner to Brandinghi -- we dropped Marina and Chelsea into the dinghy and they went ashore in search of provisions at this posh little marina while we tooled around with a little bit of a jib out and were a floating swimming platform.

Gelato for the shoppers...Yum!

The girls returned in about 45 minutes with some provisions, some gelato cups -- not sure where the gelato was, and a story about a lady that took f-o-r-e-v-e-r to check out a bag of groceries. Anyway we pulled out the rest of the jib and ended up anchoring in a lovely bay callled Brandinghi, without using the engine -- which is something that's useful to practice because no-doubt it will happen in real-life someday.

Fancy marina...looking for food!

We then made and enjoyed fun, cocktail hour and a great meal. The fun included, to Ross' dismay, a jelly-fish sighting. After a late dinner (as usual) we went to bed and woke up early with another 50 mile day to get to Arbatax -- about mid-way down the east coast of Sardinia. The good news was that the wind built to a reasonable strength throughout the day -- the bad news is that it was from the south -- and directly in our way. We ended up powering, motor-sailing, sailing, motor-sailing, then powering to get to our destination. We were also fighting a current of about a knot.